Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.

Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.

Enlightened view (samyak darshan) is that which shows you the ‘eternal’ (the pure soul), and deluded vision (mithya darshan) is that which shows you the ‘temporary’.

A role model is a person whose roles can be modelled. If the roles you conceive and give birth to today cannot be adopted by anyone in your absence, you are no good model.

. . . failure is also the stern parent of truth. (p525)

The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good and thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burdens of the past.

Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.

As a nation, we have never embraced aging.

If you don't love me at my worst, then you don't deserve me at my best.

I share something in common with Norman Rockwell and, for that matter, with Walt Disney, in that I really like to make people happy.

I have an outline but never use a teleprompter. That kills the connection.

You can't build a society purely on interests, you need a sense of belonging.